Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Wallpaper in GIMP
The festive Season is well upon us and the celebrations are only a few short weeks away, so in preparation this tutorial will help motivate you for the Holidays and produce an elegant wallpaper!
1. Downloads
- Firstly you’ll need a few Icons and a fresh font!
- I have used the font Museo, which can be downloaded here (I’m using the 500 and 700, both are free, just add to cart and checkout, it will be emailed)!
- Put text in your main fonts folder for your computer, or it may do that for you when you open it!
- I also downloaded these brilliant Christmas Icons from Icon Archive!
- *Right Click* > Save Image As! Select the 256 x 256 .png:
2. Making your Background
- Create a new document in GIMP, settings: 1600 x 1000, 72 pi, Transparency:
- Fill with Black using the Paint Bucket Tool:
- Now to create a cotton or linen like texture use HSV Noise, go Filters –> Noise –> HSV Noise
- Apply HSV Noise twice – Shift + F
- Duplicate that layer, name it ‘BG 2‘
- On BG 2, go Filters –> Blur –> Motion Blur, settings: Linear, Angle: 0, Length: 50:
- Repeat this for BG 1, but change Angle to 90
- Set BG 2 layer mode to Multiply:
- Brighten up BG 2, go Colors –> Brightness-Contrast, by 50:
3. Adding Text
- Using the font Museo Semi-Bold at 251 px make the different layers:
- My separate words/layers: Merry, Christmas, &, Happy, New Year:
4. Text Border
- On your text layer *Right Click* > Text to Selection
- Grow the selection, go Select –> Grow: 2px
- Create a new layer ‘text layer – Drop‘
- Fill selection with a grey colour: 828282
- Drag the ‘-Drop’ layer below the text layer original in the Layers panel:
- Repeat for all the other layers:
5. Adding Icons
- Using the Icons you downloaded in step 1. place them around your text:
- Import: File –> Open as Layers… (Ctrl + Alt +A):
- You may need to scale some to fit, go Layer –> Scale Layer
- If scaling up I would use 450px, but experiment to find the most suitable!
- Note: For the Fireworks Icon I used the Horizontal Flip Tool (Image->Transform->Flip Horizontally)!
6. Vignetting
- Create a new layer ‘Vignetting‘:
- Using the Gradient Tool with settings: FG Only: Black, Reverse, Radial:
- Stroke from the centre out to make a vignetting effect.
- Set ‘Vignetting’ layer mode to Soft Light:
That’s It!
Download the XCF and Wallpaper here!
You may download the XCF: merry-Christmas-happy-new-year-wallpaper-in-gimp.xcf.zip (3.9 mb)
You can also download the jpg for your wallpaper: Christmas-new-year-gimp-wallpaper.jpg (885 kb, *Right Click* > Save Image As)
More Christmas Tutorials
Free stylish Christmas Wallpaper
If you get stuck anywhere just comment below!
If you’d like to use these photographs please Contact Me!
All images on this site are copyrighted© – All Rights Reserved.
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Thanks nice work
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Thanks for the feedback, it is always great to hear things like that :)
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Hey, thanks for the tutorial. It was simple and easy to follow. I’m not an expert in GIMP, but this just made life so much easier — I decided to make an XMas card (instead of a wallpaper) and my co-worker loved it!
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Thanks Todd for the feedback!
And I hope my purpose is not lost here, but all I want is to provide a free, friendly service to all, regardless!
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This was an EXCELLENT tutorial!
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Thank you for the feedback W.Anderson!
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Very nice, Michael and thank you!